Movement, planning, and music: Motion coordinates of skilled performance

Skilled musicians are capable of fast, fluent performance of complex musical sequences whose motor demands can shape sequential aspects of performance, similar to principles of coarticulation in speech. We address how performers’ motor systems can influence the ways in which melodies are performed, both in motion and sound. In contrast to energy conservation models that favor small movements at fast tempi, musicians often use larger movements when performing at fast tempi on several non-wind instruments. Possible explanations include the fact that faster movements on those instruments tend to produce louder sounds, and increased tempo is often accompanied by increased loudness. We report here on motion characteristics of clarinet performance, a musical instrument for which finger height does not alter the loudness of tones. Skilled clarinetists performed melodies at different tempi, and motion capture techniques recorded their finger movements above the clarinet keys. All clarinetists raised their fingers higher when performing the same melodies at fast rates, despite the absence of a loudness-finger height relationship. Furthermore, finger height was related to direction of finger motion and to the number of simultaneous finger movements. These findings document the importance of biomechanical constraints on body motion that influence music performance in ways that can be nonintuitive and differ from energy conservation perspectives.